


Five things Ling whispers to Lan Fan and one thing he doesn't.

by orphan_account



Series: Five glimpses into the mind and one into the heart. [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Prompt Fic, Xing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-16
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 23:59:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's only a man. Yes, he might have tasted immortality. Yes, he might be the Emperor of Xing. Yes, he might have wrestled with a devil and won. But for all of that, he's only a mortal man with a mortal tongue.</p><p>And she. Well. She's <em>her</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five things Ling whispers to Lan Fan and one thing he doesn't.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: "oh god your lingfan is super cute and i saw that you were looking for prompts! how about a 5 and 1 fic? but please no angst, for the sake of my sanity hee hee."
> 
> As requested, some not-angsty Ling Fan.

She keeps her _chi_ confined within a rigid teardrop-shaped pool in the centre of her form. In the shadows of the throne room she reads the energies around her in lengths of shimmering ribbons of emotion and intent in the _chi_ style practised by the huntsmen of the southern mountains, although the how or why he doesn’t know. When she weighs his shoulders with her hands and imprints circles on either side of his neck with gloved fingers, the left more painful than the right, she reminds him to cloak his _chi_ , reminds him that an Emperor must be the final wall between Xing and her adversaries.

He whispers that _she_ needn’t mask her intentions.

 

She wears her mask like it were wrought of gold and ivory instead of painted wood. Yet the gentle hand that carved it left a value higher than black diamond. At first rumours and insults sprout between the other guards and retainers in a twisted game of bamboo torture. He grants her request: One by one she challenges every member of his guard in a single day, and one by one he observes them take the floor with a kunai to the neck or clutch at their throat with a garrote looped around the flesh.

He whispers that _she_ needn’t duel her shame.

 

She masters the recesses of the throne room and so sets about learning the rafters when the matchmakers arrive. On a maelstrom of snowfall faces and ash-sharpened eyebrows, the brides of the Fifty Clans bow and titter and sway in their tiny bowed shoes. Setting his jaw, he entertains every woman sent by a Clan patriarch before turning back to matters of law, of dissolving the ranking of the Clans. By winterfall, Xing murmurs of the unmarried Emperor. Of the Emperor’s alleyway whore.

He whispers that _she_ needn’t be the one hiding from the _nobles’_ presence.

 

She rides her stallion astride, hard and fast. From what he understands she spent her childhood on the back of a horse with her fingers tangled in the mane and her form melded to the neck. When the Emperor commences an excursion through the imperial forests with his advisers behind him and the leaders of whichever Clan he is pleasing that day to his left and right, he watches her applying a constant pressure on the reins of her magnificent black beast. The stallion flicks his ears back and forth, almost bouncing impatiently on his hooves as a human might; he has a distinct feeling that only her position as his vassal prevents her from doing the same.

He whispers that _she_ needn’t stop herself from riding as hard and fast as she likes.

 

She stays with him until his _chi_ settles into slumber on the massive imperial bed and is guarding him from the instant his eyelids flutter and his pulse quickens. The retainer logs inform him she rests outside of His Majesty’s inner chambers with a constant rotation of retainers monitoring him at night. So close a minute change in the _chi_ of his room would alert her, which possibly explains her presence just prior his awakening. Once he asks her, why not sleep in the bed instead of on the cold floor? She says nothing, but he _feels_ the blush colouring her cheeks. Sometimes, by accident, they touch. The heat of her skin balloons fire in his chest where the Stone once pulsed and hummed.

He whispers that _she_ needn’t leave him if she wants to stay. He whispers that _she_ can want. That _she_ can be avaricious. That _she_ can embody whatever sin she chooses and he would still . . .

 

He doesn’t whisper that he loves her.

Because the _ai_ he breathes into her skin is more than any three-word whisper could express.

(And because she has far better uses for his tongue.)


End file.
